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How do you know when you're actually passing?
(self.trans)
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this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
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Not much to add but I just found this interesting. When personal goals meet social goals I guess.
I wish it felt like actually meeting those goals, I don't experience it that way.
So here's the thing. As long as your goal is to pass, you'll always feel like you're not meeting your goals (even if you are meeting them) , because that goal is based in fear of consequences and in self image.
Ask yourself why you want to pass. Is it to have more experiences like the one with the woman in the line? Where you can just exist and have regular day to day interactions with folk? Cause you're achieving that, whether or not you believe you pass.
Shift your goals is my advice :)
Your comments are wise as usual. :-)
Unfortunately I think the reasons I want to pass are probably deeper than just the pragmatic ones, which is maybe why I feel conflicted about those desires (i.e. I think the desires could be self-defeating / harmful).
Certainly the pragmatic consequences of passing are nice: it's safer, the social interactions are smoother, it's more affirming, and so on. But I want to pass for more than the pragmatic reasons, e.g. I get hung-up on my own trans-ness being wrong, about feeling inauthentic as a woman, about constantly feeling afraid of being outed or clocked, etc.
I think you are right that I should shift my goals from "passing" to the more pragmatic goal of living in an assimilated / integrated way (whether I pass or not), but I am not sure how much control I have over that, considering I never entered into transition thinking I would ever pass, and it was never an explicit goal I allowed myself to have.
Honestly, I need to spend more time undoing my own anti-trans bias - I am not sure how to best do that, but I'm sure I could work on it.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that your goal should be pragmatic blending in. What I'm saying is that when you say your goal is to pass, there's probably more to it than that. You want to pass for some specific reason.
And it's worth identifying what that reason is. If it's pragmatic, then that's what you need to be measuring. And if it's not pragmatic, if it's about the way you see yourself, or your own sense of validity, then wanting to pass is the symptom, not the real issue.
Hm. Well, it's hard to judge how far you made it of course, but if you pass on a first glance out and about, then you seem to be on the right track? Usually people get second glances whenever something feels off. Like you look over someone, your eyes move past them, but then your brain is like "hold on a second?" and your eyes dart back. If that happens less and less then that means you're passing certainly more than before and end up blending in. I think that sounds like decent progress at least.